so you sailed away into a grey sky morning

"I've had it! I can't take this anymore!"

I looked up from the screen in surprise. "Can't take what?" I asked, my confusion leaking into my voice. It had been a while since I had spoken to Inspiration, and I couldn't even remember the last time she was this upset. I paused the youtube video I was wasting time with, making sure to go back the last few seconds. I wouldn't want to miss anything.

"This!" she cried, throwing her hands up in the air. She took a deep breath, and I could literally see her forcing herself to calm down. "The constant ignoring. You never have any time for me anymore."

"That's not true," I argued. "We just talked three days ago."

"You talking about your school hardly counts as talking," she said. "It's always the same now. I try and get your attention, and you just brush me off with some hackneyed excuse. You're too tired or too busy or too bored. You're always too something, and I have had enough."

The drained resignation in her voice stopped my argument in my throat. I could see it would do no good to argue now. "I'm sorry," I said. "Maybe tomorrow we could..." My voice ran off as she shook her head sadly.

"I'm leaving," she said, turning her back. Her voice rang with finality.

"You can't leave," I said. "You-" As I spoke, Creativity joined her. He handed her an old bag, its colors faded and held together with so many patches you could hardly tell what the original one was. He dragged behind him a trunk covered in stamps.

"We really can't stay here. You must see that," he told me calmly, the mark of a mind made up. "It's gotten too crowded. History spends all day sleeping on the couch, snoring over the tv that Lethargy never turns off. Math leaves his theorems and formulas lying around for us to trip on and get tangled in. English has stuffed our closet with nouns and fills the air with verbs to choke our breath. And Labor has started to act up again. Last week, he locked me in a cupboard and it took days for me to get out of there. They've put grey wallpaper over our painted walls. They turned the heat down to just above freezing. They've replaced the carpeting with hard facts. And while we're slowly suffocating, they're all thriving. They get bigger with every passing day."

"I'll tell them to be quieter and neater and nicer. I'll put them on diets and spend more time with you. I'll build more closet space for you and take the locks off the cupboards. Just please don't go," I begged.

Creativity shook his head. "It's too late for all that now," he said. "We saw the boxes labeled Master's move in yesterday, and we can't take it anymore. We were not meant to handle so much abuse. We have to leave before it kills us."

"Those boxes are empty... they'll stay empty," I tried to reason with them.

"It was nice while it lasted," Inspiration said. "But you've found other things to fill your mind, your time, your life, and we need to find somewhere to stay where we can be free."

Without waiting for me to say anything, Creativity shook my hand, Inspiration gave me a hug, and they walked out, leaving me with nothing but the grey facts and my paused youtube video.

***

my mind has been disappointingly uninspired lately. i miss my creativity. if you see him, please tell him i'm sorry and i'd love for him to come back.

*Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) - Vertical Horizon